The Battle for Smart Glasses and an Exclusive Interview with Netflix CMO Marian Lee

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. The battle for smart glasses is on. All eyes are on meta versus snap. Plus, we sat down with Netflix CMO Marian Lee for her first ever podcast interview. We talk about everything from AI to competition with YouTube and whether Netflix will sign more exclusive podcasting deals this year.

0:32Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hi, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into our weekly show about the business of the creator economy. The smart glasses wars are heating up. Meta just rolled out a new lineup of AI glasses and partnered with Kylie Jenner on a pair, while Snap's long-awaited consumer pair of AR glasses is finally out, and we have a lot of opinions. Later in the show, we're joined by Marianne Lee, the CMO of Netflix, for her first ever podcast interview. We sat down with her at the LinkedIn studio at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and got her take on everything from YouTube and Nordic Noirs to that Jay Shetty deal and AI.

1:10Jasmine Enberg: Okay, we thankfully survived the historic French heat wave. Just barely. Made it home from Cannes Lions. It was a close one. But we have so much to get into today. So let's start with smart glasses. So who would have thought that the tech battle to watch this summer would be between Snap and Meta and their smart glasses? So last week at Cannes Lions, Meta launched a new lineup of three different AI glasses. These are all Meta branded glasses and they start at just$299, making them cheaper than the Ray-Ban Metas and the Oakleys that have already been in market. Meta also partnered with Kylie Jenner on one of the pairs.

1:46These ones are just a little bit more expensive at$399, but that's probably also because they have a diamond encrusted in them, which apparently was Kylie's idea.

1:56Jasmine Enberg: That comes just after Snap finally announced the launch of its consumer version of its AR glasses called Spectacles or Specs. These cost a whopping$2 ,195 and will be available this fall. To promote the launch, Snap also partnered with celebrities like Kaya Gerber, Imogene Heap, and Jack Harlow. It also hung up a massive photo of someone wearing the glasses on the Quasette Boulevard in Cannes last week. Some people thought it was Evan Spiegel in the photo, but we're not convinced. I don't think that's really his style to put himself, you know, front and center like that. But anyway, Jasmine, let's get into it.

2:32Jasmine Enberg: Initial reactions. Let's start with Meta. So my first question when I heard about the Kylie Jenner glasses was, who asked for this? And so that is also exactly what I asked Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta's global head of business group, while we were on the ground in Cannes. She kind of dodged the question and basically just said something like, Mark Zuckerberg is really excited about them. I'm sure that he is. I'm also sure that he was very excited about the Kendall Jenner voiced AI chatbots that they launched. And we all know how those turned out. If you missed it, they shut those down. Anyway, here is Zuckerberg talking about the Kylie glasses in an Instagram video.

3:06Jasmine Enberg: One that I am very excited about. is we partnered with Kylie to design these Kylie glasses. You have a bunch of touches that Kylie put into them herself. You know, she's such a fashion icon that it was just really fun getting a chance to work with her on this. She really wanted this gem to be embedded in the glasses. I think it's a really nice touch. They feel great. They look really good. And I think people are going to like those. So Zuck aside, opinions on the partnership have been mixed, but I would say they lean more on the negative side of things. I mean, Samir Chowdhury from Colin and Samir was one of the few glaringly positive reviews I could find.

3:46And he posted, quote, well done meta on LinkedIn, explaining how Kylie Jenner is the ultimate status symbol and one of the few billboards left in the world. So obviously he liked it. But so many of the other posts that I saw said things like, quote, it's giving hyper surveillance state brought to you by celeb socialites. or my personal favorite, quote, spying, but make it fashion. And that, of course, plays off all of the privacy concerns that Meta has had over the years and is now kind of posturing on people's faces with these smart glasses. But for me, I mean, I think the bigger question is just how many people actually want Kylie Jenner's voice in their ear at all times?

4:28Because I just don't think it's as deep for most people as the privacy hawks think that it is. And at the same time, though, I also don't think that Kylie is as much of the ultimate status symbol or as cool as she used to be.

4:41Jasmine Enberg: But to Meta's credit, we are all talking about the Kylie Jenner glasses. So it worked for that at least. But there are two other pair of glasses which aren't related to Kylie if you don't want her voice in your head. But for me, I think the smartest thing Meta did was to partner with Oakley and Ray-Ban initially on the glasses. The whole problem with wearables historically is that they've been ugly and not something you want to wear. and these partnerships solved for that. I mean, they look good. They're glasses people want to wear. They're glasses people have already been wearing in their life.

5:08Jasmine Enberg: And the new glasses look good too without a partnership with a major, you know, sunglass maker. They just look like normal sunglasses and that's huge to get people to adopt them. Side note, that's also why people love the Oura Ring. It blends in and actually looks like a normal ring. And that's what the Google Glass and the Fitbits of the world and all these kind of past devices were missing. I mean, even the Apple Watch. I don't think it's that aesthetic. But it's been more widely adopted. I have a friend who's like for her wedding, she's banning Apple Watches. She cannot stand when people wear Apple Watches with like black tie.

5:43Jasmine Enberg: But that has caught on a bit more. I remember I had a Fitbit for a while and I just was like, I can't wear this. It's so ugly, even though I wanted all the tracking. I think the Oura Ring looks really good, but it also has something that people really want, including me, which is sleep tracking. And now as I'm saying this, I realize that I'm not wearing my Aura ring right now. I must have forgotten to put it on this morning. Yeah. So who knows? I mean, are these devices really that useful? In seriousness, this is a reason why Meta's glasses are actually catching on. I mean, despite all the surveillance commentary, right?

6:11Jasmine Enberg: The features aren't crazy high tech, but they're useful to people's day-to-day lives. I mean, you can take photos and videos, you can take calls, you can listen to music without having to put on headphones. We talked to Meta's CMO about this in a recent episode. Here's a little of what he said. What is your favorite way to use the Meta AI glasses? Phone calls is my favorite. The quality of the noise cancellation is just so good. I love the photos too. Like I was holding my friend's baby the other day and I actually got the cutest picture because I was completely hands-free. Like it was lovely.

6:39Jasmine Enberg: Okay, so the new glasses also have Meta AI built into them and it's now powered by Muse Spark, which is Meta's first model out of its super intelligence labs. Meta says that Muse Spark is its quote, smartest and fastest AI model yet. And the idea is that it will improve some of the functions like voice conversations and shopping that Meta AI supports. Although, will a company ever say that their model is not the best or fastest, right? Like, we haven't heard that. It's hard to say, though, how much of a selling point for people this will be beyond, like, the tech aficionados in Silicon Valley.

7:11Jasmine Enberg: Because again, like, most people are going to be doing pretty simple tasks. And that's really the key here. Meta isn't trying to overdo it on the tech. I mean, VR headsets have never taken off in the mainstream. And the goal really is just to get people to wear them and used to wearing tech on their face. Totally. And I mean, to your point about the smartest and the fastest models, like it's all relative, right? And we should also note that we saw some research recently that showed that MuseSpark isn't quite as good as some of the other models out there, like OpenAI's or Google's latest models.

7:40In response, though, Meta's AI chief called it a, quote, appetizer to its upcoming models, which I just thought was a really funny way of framing all of this. But back to the glasses. So the other thing that Meta has going for it is that its new glasses are relatively affordable. Like, I wouldn't say that they're cheap. Even$300 is a pretty big sum for a lot of people, especially for something that is not a necessity. But if you compare that to specs, it's basically free, right? It's almost nothing. Free, basically. Girl math. Anyway,$2 ,200 is literally what I paid in monthly rent for my studio apartment in Manhattan before the pandemic.

8:18So there's a point of reference there. And that affordability is one reason why Meta launched these glasses. I mean, one of the things that Nicola said to me was that they are, quote, just another entry point for people to have AI wearables. Makes sense. Again, you know, cost is a huge barrier to entry for smart glasses and really any device. She also said it's, quote, really early days, but it's very much the vision of where the next computing platform is going to be and how people utilize the technology. This is also so similar to Snap's pitch, by the way, and it's also the reason why both of these companies are doing this.

8:51As an aside, I am not totally convinced that smart glasses really are the next computing platform, at least in the way that smartphones have been. Like, I love my Meta Ray-Bans. I love my Oura Ring. As anyone who's listened to this podcast knows, I think both are super fun. Well, you're not even aware yet. I know. Forgot. But that's one of the problems, right? Like I'm not going to forget my phone, but I might forget my Oura Ring because it isn't necessary to everyday life. Like both are fun. They look good, but I just don't need them in the same way. And I find it hard to believe that that's changing anytime soon.

9:23That's of course not to say that people aren't buying Oura Rings and that they're not buying smart glasses. I mean, Meta sold 7 million smart glasses in 2025. That's triple what it sold in 2023 and 2024 combined. But it's still pretty small in the grand scheme of things. I mean, there were 1.25 billion smartphones shipped in 2025, according to data we found from Omdia.

9:45Jasmine Enberg: Okay, moving on to spec. So Snapchat's whole bet is that its more advanced tech will make it a winner against Meta or anyone else. Snap has way more riding on the success of Spectacles than Meta does. yes, both companies, as you said, believe that this is the next computing platform. You and I disagree, and maybe they'll disagree with me here. But talking business-wise, and especially in the shorter term, I think Snap has more to lose. So I dove deep into Snap's business and specs in a story in August, one of my last for the information. And this quote really stuck with me from a former Snap employee who said that Snap has already, quote, bet the farm on spectacles.

10:22Jasmine Enberg: So as of last summer, Snap had poured$3 billion into AR glasses. That's a fraction of what Meta has invested in wearable technology, but it's a major expense for a company of Snap's much more modest size. Snap's market cap this week was around$7 billion, while Meta's was$1.4 trillion. Rivals like Meta also have the cash to throw at AI and wearables. Snap doesn't. And its ad business is tiny in comparison and also growing so slowly while Meta and YouTubes are growing by double digits and much larger than Snap's. Yeah. So yes and no for me on this. I completely agree with you that Snap has a lot to lose here because its financials aren't great.

11:01I mean, last year it made about$6 billion in revenue. But I also think that Meta has a lot to lose as well. I mean, it has already flopped a few times in its attempts to pivot. I'm thinking about the Metaverse, for example. And while it can afford financially to lose out here right now, I don't know that it can afford to do so optically. On the other hand, I also kind of think that everybody just kind of expects Snap to fail. So the optics may not matter as much. Oof. I know. Sorry, Snap. And then in the longer term, I mean, Meta is spending so much money on AI. Investors are not going to be happy if this wearables thing goes south because it is the first and the most visible physical manifestation of their AI bet outside of what they're doing on their social media platforms and in their ad business.

11:49So going back to the Kylie glasses, yes, while Kylie might get them some buzz and we're all talking about it, they also really need to sell those devices. Plus, and this goes back to why Zuckerberg is so excited about all this, I think he has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder for missing the smartphone boom, and he is not going to willingly throw in the towel on this one. I just don't think that he wants to admit defeat here.

12:11Jasmine Enberg: My gosh, this reminded me when Facebook tried to launch a smartphone. That didn't go over well. The good news for him, though, is that Meta seems to be very much winning right now, at least compared to Snap when it comes to this early stage of the smart glasses war. But the other crazy part of the new specs is that they haven't let anyone demo the new pair, to my knowledge. Like they didn't at the launch event, which is very suspicious. Normally, the point of these launch events is to get people to demo it and you give early access to some tech reviewers. And we got to demo the meta ray bands that had just come out when we were at the Cannibal Festival.

12:44Yeah, very excited to have this right now.

12:47Jasmine Enberg: They were they were happy to. But Julia Borstein, for example, from CNBC didn't interview with Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap at launch. And she said she got to try them on but didn't get to actually use them. And that interview also went viral because Evan Spiegel's ear is bending under the apparent weight of the specs. As usual, the internet had some reactions. Here are some to give a few examples. Snapchat specs are dot dot dot big in all caps. Another one quote, snap spent 3 billion over 10 years making futuristic air glasses. The future looks suspiciously similar to my grandpa's driving glasses.

13:23Jasmine Enberg: And here's our favorite review of all. Having just one normal friend could have saved him$3 billion and 10 years of his life. All he had to do was put on these glasses, walk out and say, what do you think? And any normal person would be like, this ain't it. Go back to the drawing board. Don't release this. Your stock's going to go down by 10%, which it did because it's obvious. Okay. I mean, I completely agree with all of these reviews. They just do not look good. And we got to try the developer versions and they were super chunky. They were totally not ready for prime time. But the Snap team promised us that the consumer versions would look better and that they would be lighter.

14:04Clearly, the ones that they launched really are quite thick and heavy if they're bending people's ears when they're wearing them. And at the price point, like$2 ,200, like we said before, it is going to be really hard for people to stomach this, especially because they just don't look good. Like, yeah, they look fine on Kaya Gerber, but what doesn't? I mean, she's a model. She's the daughter of Cindy Crawford. But I'm just not convinced that on an average person, they're going to look good at all.

14:29Jasmine Enberg: Speaking of which, the launch strategy was also a bit strange, but maybe that's why they did it that way. I mean, they only worked with five big name stars at launch, Kaya Gerber being one of them, and the rest were all kind of traditional celebrities athletes. Meta, meanwhile, yes, they had Kylie Jenner, but they've been working with a wide variety of creators since the beginning to promote Meta Ray-Bans. Then Alex Heath from Sources reported that Evan Spiegel is in talks to pay Robert Downey Jr. $100 million in Snapstock to be an ambassador for the new specs. I mean, I don't even know what to say about that.

14:59That's pretty wild. No, that's crazy. Zooming out, and in all fairness to Snap here, this is so emblematic of its role in the tech and social media world more broadly. It has always been an early mover and has arguably had such a huge influence on how we use social media today. The problem is, is that it's always had a really hard time executing. Others, especially meta, do it better and they do it at scale. So, so many of the features that made Snapchat popular and made it different, like disappearing messages or stories, are now widely available on other services and are better businesses on other services, namely Instagram.

15:39But, you know, Evan Spiegel has committed to this vision. They have been working on spectacles for more than a decade. So kind of like Mark Zuckerberg here, I don't think that he can admit defeat anytime soon.

15:49Jasmine Enberg: Yes. And remember, I mean, a decade ago, they had the vending machines with the initial spectacles, which people wanted to wear. I mean, I was like a recent graduate and people really liked them, but then it very quickly kind of fizzled out. So again, they were very early. But a major reason why Snap has been able to sink so much money into spectacles is because Evan Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy have super voting shares that give them control over most matters presented to shareholders. I actually asked Evan Spiegel about that control in an interview on stage in June 2025, and he was pretty unapologetic about it.

16:21Jasmine Enberg: He said, quote, if investors aren't aligned with our long-term vision, then they can sell our stock and go buy another stock where they see more long-term opportunity. And guess what? They have. Snap stock peaked around$83 a share in 2021, and earlier this week, it was trading at about$4 per share. Another not-so-positive sign for Snap, Julie Henderson, the longtime head of comms at Snap and a very close ally of Evan Spiegel announced earlier this week that she's joining Pinterest as head of comms. And this follows another high profile departure of Jim Shepard, who led creator partnerships, who was another longtime exec, and he decamped to Meta, and he will be working on Meta smart glasses.

16:56Now, of course, there's also an activist investor involved in Snap's business. So we'll see what happens next. I mean, I still love Snap. So I'm, I hope that one day they'll be able to turn things around. But anyway, now it's time for our interview with Marion Lee, the CMO of Netflix. Netflix has become synonymous with streaming. Almost a decade ago now, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings famously said that the company's only competitor is sleep. That's not too far off from what Marion Lee, Netflix's CMO, told us when we asked her about how she thinks about the competitive landscape. Lee, who spent eight years at Spotify before joining Netflix in 2021, has seen the streamer through so many high-profile hit shows and movies from K-pop Demon Hunters to Wednesday.

17:39She told us all about how the team chooses what shows to focus on. Spoiler alert, it's a mix of art and science. And how fandoms are shaping their marketing strategy.

17:48Jasmine Enberg: We also asked her about that Jay Shetty deal, as well as a string of other creator deals the streamer has struck lately, from Salish and Jordan Matter to Alex Earle. She told us that creator content is an important part of their strategy, especially as Netflix is trying to cater to changing viewing habits. That includes launching a short-form video feed in April to help drive more viewership on the platform. Here's our full conversation with Marian Lee. Hi, Marian. Welcome to Scalable. Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. We're so excited to have you here and in the beautiful LinkedIn studio.

18:18Yeah. In the air conditioning. Yes, yes. So let's start high level because Netflix has a seemingly endless content library. You have original shows, you have movies, comedy specials, now even games. So how do you decide what your team should dedicate their time and their resources to? It's a great question. We have, I run a global team. And so we think about prioritization very locally. And we work years out. We really know we're working with our content executives. We are reading scripts. We are reading green light memos. We're looking at what's coming down the pipeline. We also sit on a mountain of data.

19:00And so we take all that information with a lot of human intuition, and then we try to build a plan that way. But as you know, like best laid plans always leave a little room for flexibility. So as films and shows get shot, you know, we might be watching dailies, we might be seeing how things are coming in, understanding the audience for something, and then we might adjust on the fly. And so that's generally how we build our plans. Our local teams around the world take a lot of our US Hollywood type content and build that into their local slate. And then we really think about a holistic view for the market itself.

19:48And then we leave a lot of latitude to do things post launch in case there's something that we really don't anticipate taking off around the world. So it sounds like you're involved in the process from the very beginning. Is that right? We are. We have a lot of, you know, we work very closely with our content executives who are responsible for development and identifying content, but we're constantly talking to them about like why they're making the choices that they are. Who do they think a particular show or film is for, who we think the audience might be for a particular type of show. And then we go from there.

20:28So it's a really constant dialogue. And then because we're shooting things so far out, our teams go to set often to capture behind the scenes, social content with our talent. And then they're really going to identify things that they think might really resonate for us to help in the promotion. So they, when I started at Netflix five years ago, they were shooting the first season of Wednesday in Romania. And one of the first things they said was like, oh, we need to send a team to Romania. And I was like, are you sure? Like, you know, what are you guys going to be doing there? And actually they shot a ton of behind the scenes content, which ultimately we talked about later.

21:12Like they never ended up using because there was other stuff that ended up being more, you know, resonant later. But they had it. They had to go there just to like get the feel. So everything you read on paper until you're like on set and understanding what the dynamic is, and then building sort of rapport with the actors or the showrunners or directors, it becomes different, right? The angles could be different about what we want to pull out, but that could be two to three years before a show ever airs. And so you're trying to have like, you know, a crystal ball view into what is going to be popular.

21:51And why, you know, for

21:52Jasmine Enberg: Wednesday, you know, it was a brand new show. You didn't know how it would perform. So how do you decide, okay, they're going to Romania. This is the one that we should allocate resources to. Some of it is the data to say like this type of show, you know, or genre, you know, or it's a similar show to this. And our viewers really like that. Wednesday is built on IP that is known the Addams family. And so some, you know, we have a remake of Scooby-Doo, a live action show coming up. So in those cases, there's, there might be a built-in audience for something that is nostalgic. So we have a sense.

22:29And then if it's like a Jenna Ortega or, you know, Catherine Zeta-Jones, there's a cast. And so you, you kind of have that intuition of like, okay, this could work. When you get on set, again, like paper to then reality could be different. But when you get on set and you really feel it, when the team came back, you know, I asked them like, oh, what did you see? And they'll say, oh, when she did that dance, you know, like in the gym, we knew that was going to be huge. And so sometimes it's just one person on the team that has that belief and then really chases it down. And the great thing is like everyone on the team is a fan.

23:10And so when they get to work on shows and films that they're naturally fans of, they find that thing that, you know, the fandom will also really glom on to. And I imagine you also watch every show, right? I mean, how much time do you spend watching Netflix?

23:28Jasmine Enberg: I watch a lot of stuff. How do you do? Because I guess you can do 2X, but I don't think you can do that on Netflix. I know. I don't 2X anything. I actually don't like 2Xing podcasts. Really? I do 1.5. 2X is a little too much for me, but 1.5 is like a happy medium. I watch a lot, but I grew up loving television. Like I am, you know, that's what I did, like glued to the TV when I came home. And so sometimes I'm like, I can't believe this is my job. I get to watch TV for a living. I watch everything. And I start with the things that are like major priorities for us. But then I was in Sweden a couple of weeks ago with our Nordics team.

24:09And I was like, okay, you know, like, what am I watching on the plane? Like, you know, 13 hours there. And then I will just, like, crush shows on the way here. Did you watch Nordic shows on the way there? I did. What did you watch? There is a series, a second season just came out called Hide and Seek. But the first season is called Chestnut Man. It's such a great show. I'm originally from Finland. Yeah, so I love all the Nordic noirs. I think I've seen pretty much all of them. So this is really just a question for me on what I should watch next. That was, and then there's a show, Detective Hule.

24:43Oh, I don't know that one either. Yeah, spelled hold, but Hule, they told me it was pronounced. So first of all, the Nordic noir stuff is very dark, even though you guys are all like the happiest people in the world. I take issue with that, but we can talk about that offline. So I didn't really get it. And I was watching, and then I get to Sweden, It's sunny like, you know, 23 hours out of the day right now. And I was like, oh, I'll probably be murdered on the way to the hotel. It's also just like one of the safest places in the world. Completely, but the shows are so dark. It's so scary. So those shows are great.

25:20So it also lets me understand what a local market, when I'm visiting, what they are prioritizing, what's really important to them, what their viewers are into. And so if I don't watch what they're working on, you know, like how can I build that rapport and connection with a team that's really focused on, you know, Nordics content? And then it helps me also distinguish Swedish versus Danish versus Finnish and like how the different cultures in that region work together, how they produce differently or how the shows manifest. best. And so that's a really great part of my job that I get to watch things from all around the world and try to under, if I watch something and try to understand like, might this travel to Brazil?

26:07And then I'll be able to connect the dots with the teams. And that's like one of the best parts about my job.

26:13Jasmine Enberg: So Netflix, as we said, has been moving into so many different categories lately. A big one has been signing exclusive deals with creators, which is the world that we live in and podcasters. A recent one was a massive deal with Jay Shetty. So what's the strategy here because it feels like every day almost there's a new creator deal. So tell us more about that. I mean, we're so excited. We are, we're looking at all of these as sort of building out our content portfolio, Jay Shetty being one. We have a deal with Salish Matter and her dad, Jordan, Danny Go. So we're really looking at like how to bring all of that content to life for Netflix viewers, Mark Rober.

26:51So like a lot of things in that space that we just feel like, you know, Netflix viewers are watching, listening. And so how can we help expand their audience on Netflix? So it's exciting. I'm excited to keep going into these spaces.

27:07Jasmine Enberg: In the second half of the year, can we expect more deals? Like it feels like the first half was a big flurry of deals, but yeah, we're really, you know, we're open to anything and everything. I actually don't greenlight those deals or content executives do, but it's definitely an important space for us as we like to say that we meet audiences where they are. And content creators are definitely a big part of the entertainment ecosystem. And so I think it makes sense for us to also have, you know, shows with them that resonate with the Netflix viewership. So it's exciting. So I know you said you're not directly involved, but a very interesting thing about these deals is that many of them require the creator to then take their long form shows off of YouTube.

27:56Jasmine Enberg: Obviously, we understand why, right? This is a very competitive environment. But do you have a sense of how difficult of a decision that is for creators or any kind of color you can give us on that? I know. Why is that important to you? Yeah. I don't know. It's a great framing because I'm not sure like how they're, you know, they're so involved. these creators are so involved in their brands as their business and they are their brand, right? Like you guys like are your brand. And so you tend to think about things very holistically and think about where your audiences are. And for us, you know, I think we're trying different models and like what might work.

28:33And, and I think our partnership with Spotify and bringing a lot of the podcast. Yeah. Um, onto Netflix is an exciting, you know, also new way for us to, to work. And I think we are a company that likes to try new things and then we try to make things work out. And then we're also very fast to pivot. If we find that like, maybe that type of model doesn't work. I think that creator ecosystem is not typical for like a television, how a television show gets produced or a movie gets greenlit. And so the models around your creator are very different and we are very open to being flexible about what works for them and what works for us.

29:24And in the case of, um, you know, Salish and Jordan matter, like, again, they are looking at their entirety of their ecosystem and their brand very differently. And we also have to meet them where they are. So our marketing teams might not be exactly structured in the way that like, they have a tell, they have a show, you know, they were like 400 episodes on YouTube, but how we surround them also has to look different. We can't jam them into our model of marketing a traditional TV show or a film. And so we also have to be, I always think we're nimble, but then something comes along to say, like, no, you actually have to break the mold and start over and think about working with these creators differently.

30:14And that's what we're trying to like build an even more flexibility to do. So that was actually going to be our next question. I mean, what are some of the differences between working on a creator show like Jordan and Salish Matter versus say Bridgerton, right? Is it different because it's a different format or is it different because it's a creator, like you said? It's interesting. Those two are probably even more similar, even the Bridgertons. Like, you know, Shonda Rhimes and her team, they do actually think about the universes that are creating for the long-term and the longevity. So they don't just think about the next season of Bridgerton.

30:50It's Shondaland. It's Shondaland. So they are used to, you know, they're like, I think Grey's Anatomy is like 27 seasons on network television, which is incredible. They think out very long. And so we're doing that with them. This next season is being shot in Scotland. And so I was talking to them yesterday and we were like, okay, so what do we do with plaids? What do we do with tartans? Like, we know this is going to be huge. I know that in six months, everyone on Pinterest is going to be searching for Scottish chart. And so how do we get ahead of it? So they actually do think holistically, how might this show up in merchandise?

31:32So what is that 360 view of a show looks like? And that's exactly how Salish and her dad are thinking. They think of Salish as not just her, but what is she interested in now? But what is the durability of her as a 16-year-old? And what is that going to look like when she turns 20 and maybe isn't as into something? Or when she started when she was 10 or 11, that looks very different. And so it's nice for us to have these conversations about where are you now? And we're going to launch a new show with her and her dad. But like, I need to also help you all think about durability as like a brand and what you want to be five years and make sure the choices we're making in the short term don't really, you know, help you get to that five year plan also.

32:25And so that surrounding somebody as a brand or like immediately thinking of that person as a universe, which we do for a Bridgerton or a Stranger Things or a Wednesday, but we don't do that for every show.

32:41Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, like the diplomat, right? Yeah. Would be a different. Yeah. So interesting. Do you have a sense? I mean, I know it's really early days, but do you have a sense of what creator shows or what podcasts are really resonating on Netflix right now? I mean, we know Miss Rachel and kids creator content has been such a huge hit. Yeah, huge. You know, I think kids content particularly because it is a safe environment. And if you have, you know, an Netflix premium plan, there's, I mean, there's no ads actually on kids content anyway. So it is like you can watch 20 episodes of Mark Rober like my son does and like get really into Crunch Labs and Swim in Jell-O and Launch Rockets.

33:19And so that tends to be something that parents really, you know, that's important to them when they think about like, okay, I want to put my kid in front of something educational, Sesame Street. What is that environment? You make different choices as a parent than you do maybe like for yourself. And so we're looking at everything. Like we're revamping our mobile app. So how you interact with, you know, video podcasts on the mobile versus video podcasts on the television and how you might like think about that differently. You know, my my husband tends to watch all of Bill Simmons ringer network, you know, on the TV and that for him.

34:00But I'm watching like on my phone as I get ready in the morning. And you're launching a short video feed, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we're trying different things. We obviously create a lot of short form video for our social channels. We don't want it to be like just a redux of a bunch of clips, but we are trying different things like maybe something that works on social that we're trying that we are actually co-creating. That's not just a clipping strategy we're trying in that vertical feed. And so there's a lot of things like, and eventually that personalization of like what you watch long form, you know, might translate into something different again, short form.

34:42Jasmine Enberg: Is the goal then to drive people ultimately to watch the full episode or is it? Yeah, always the goal to have ultimate engagement, right? And we do want them. I watch, my daughter's 14, so I sort of watch her, how she engages with shows. And so sometimes she'll say, oh, I know what that show's about. And I'm like, oh, did you watch? And she's like, no, I just watched like all the clips. That's how I consume a lot of podcasts. I don't need to read that book because I know exactly, or I listened to the interview with the author. And so again, it's about like trying to meet audiences where they are and different age groups are interacting with content in a different way.

35:23And so we want to be able to serve them on all surfaces.

35:26Jasmine Enberg: You spoke to Adweek about kind of fans doing all the hard work for you and then how Netflix can kind of draft off of them. So what did you mean by that? So sometimes we can plan ahead and we can know that a moment is going to be big. But we sometimes fans are, you know, they're so crazy and rabid for whatever they are part of, you know, whatever fandom they're a part of. And it just takes like one creative genius to like put a new song to something and mash it together. Isn't Netflix and chill also from a fab? Yeah. And so we're super great at co-opting with the fans too and always giving them credit.

36:09But then we're just listening. You know, it's probably like what you guys, you want the feedback to hear what you can do more of. And so for us, it's like, oh, they're all doing this thing that's taking off. And it's not really, you know, we're not, we can go later and do a postmortem and understand like why, but in the moment you want to capture and ride that wave because you don't know how long it's going to last. Right. And so we tend to do that and yeah, we let the fans do the hard work for us. We're listening to what's resonating with them, but you know, some of our most viewed content isn't exactly like socially conversational.

36:53Um, but there's a lot of stuff Like our true crime documentaries are very conversational, but something like... I just watched The Crash. Oh, yeah. And then I was consuming everything on social. And by the way, I think I read like People Magazine wrote like 64 ancillary stories about the crash, right? And people go so deep. Those things are very conversational and also are high viewing. We have a lot of things that are super high viewing and you watch and you're super satisfied, but you're not going to go on social media and like join in on the conversation about something, but millions of people watched it.

37:33And so it's just like the crash or something where you're like, can you even believe that the dad wore that? Yeah. I was like, I need to know everything. Everything. And you're like, what? She like was living with her, you know, like who did, so you have so many questions and that begets a lot of things. So even when I watch and I'm like, oh my God, like if I feel compelled to text the content executive to say like, what happened in the fourth episode? You know, that was wild. Then I, you know, I kind of have a sense. I try to connect the dots for the team. They're like, yeah, we already knew that like six months ago.

38:12And I'm like, okay, just making sure. But yeah, there's things that are highly conversational. There's things that are going to be super popular and like nobody will post about it on social. So it's just, it's sort of a difference, you know?

38:27Jasmine Enberg: Is there a quick example of kind of a case study? You talked about the ramen trucks, right? And kind of how you jump on the quick fan reactions. Yeah. Well, you know, K-pop Demon Hunters is like a really great example of something that we have been working on that film for five years since, you know, I got to Netflix. The filmmakers have been working on it for like 10 years, right? And we had pre-planned some things and a lot of social things. And our film marketing team that was working on that film, super dedicated. And you have to be, when you're working on something, you're like living in that environment.

39:04But we definitely did not anticipate that when it came out, that the viewing would continue to go up and to the right. And that is very rare for it to continue to grow, really driven by people watching over and over again. And so that's when I see my team at their best. It's this energy. It's not chaotic, but it is fast. And they're like, oh, how should we, you know, how should we capture this moment? And then it could be as simple as like us talking, like what else can we do? We went six weeks after theatrically to do sing-alongs because I was talking to my boss, Ted Sarandos, our co-CEO. And he's like, why don't we put it in theaters and do a sing-along?

39:57And I was like, huh, okay. You know, like it was very simple. It wasn't like built into this plan. And we said, okay, give us a week. Let's figure it out. And I remember the moment that the team worked on the plan. I went back to Ted and I said, all right, we're going to be on like 400 screens in August. You know, the movie came out June 20th. We just had the one-year anniversary. We'll be out the third week of August. We'll put tickets on sale, you know, a week before. And Ted said, only 400 screens. And I was like, what? We just did this, you know. So anyway, cut to we put the tickets on sale and they sold out so fast that the theaters added more screens.

40:38And so we ended up being in more than 1 ,500 screens for a sing-along for a movie that families had probably already watched by then 10 times. This is what it sounds like. Why did we cover up the color stuck inside our head? You know, my niece was like, oh, I'm playing in a soccer game. My whole soccer team is going to the movie theater for the sing-along. Dressed up. We didn't have costumes out yet. You know, in makeshift costumes, all screaming the songs and watching and selling out. And we did that for the fans, but it really is partially just, you know, being nimble and fast and agile and thinking about what the fans want, but like listening to what they're saying also and understanding that people are posting a lot of the music.

41:26Okay, so that's the component, not that they just want to watch it in theaters. They want to sing along. Yeah. So zooming out a little bit to think about the competitive landscape. I mean, people have so many choices now. There are so many different premium streamers out there. Who do you see as your biggest competitor? I mean, is it one of the premium streamers or is it YouTube? I get this question a lot, even when I was at Spotify and it was like, who, you know, because at the time it's like, well, Spotify was sort of like one of one. So every, I remember when Beats was coming out, it was like, oh, we have to like really think about that.

42:00And I will say that at Netflix, we're very disciplined and focused about thinking about our own business. it's not to say that we are ignoring the competition, but I think if you were always playing defense against your competition, it's not like a great place to be like from a, you know, thinking about your own business. We stay focused on that. And then from a marketing perspective, my biggest competition is everything that you are spending time on. And that is not just YouTube. That is Instagram. That is Tik TOK. That is snap. It's like, you know, it can be audio books. It's Like where, where are people in, even for myself, like, where am I spending time on?

42:40I also spend time on LinkedIn, you know, like, and so every five minutes that you're spending on something else is maybe like not the 30 minutes you're going to spend watching the first episode of the diplomat. And so I think we have to look at it really holistically about where people's attention, you know, and time is being spent and think about how do we capture some of that attention to move it back to viewing. so so where is that all going right like there's everything is so fragmented it feels like we've

43:10Jasmine Enberg: lost the monoculture you have moments of it still but where do you see just to kind of wrap up like where do you see entertainment headed and how do you stay competitive in that environment too yeah and with everything blurring i mean there's podcasts on netflix now they used to be only audio yeah it does feel like there's so many things and it can be very overwhelming and we're I like that. But I do think like from a marketing perspective, there's always going to be a million channels. And it's a little bit different than like, I remember when I was in publishing and I was working at Vogue, we invested heavily in New York City bus sides and taxi tops.

43:46Jasmine Enberg: And people are still doing that. Exactly. And then we had like a little downturn in out of home. And then I went to Spotify and I was like, oh, out of home is back. We're like back advertising in out of home. Even creators are advertising out of home. Creators love it. Times Square billboard. And so that was the insight we had at Spotify at the time was like, people love seeing their name in lights, right? They're going to post that. But actually the amplification of that Times Square billboard is so much more when a creator or talent or one of our Harlan Coben, he lives in New Jersey, he will come to Times Square and take a photo of himself on any billboard that we put for all of his shows around the world.

44:27And then share that out to their audience. And that reaches hundreds of millions more people than it used to. Right. And so your media ends up working harder, but the channels are just different, you know, like TikTok didn't exist back then, or, you know, Snapchat didn't. So as a marketer, I, I just view formats and channels as sort of an ever changing landscape. And I think that reach used to be the most important thing as marketers in the beginning, you know, so it's like, where, where is that monolith of culture existing? But now for us, it's really about finding the audience and it can be in a niche channel, but as long as you have truly engaged audiences, I think that's better.

45:17So you You might have to have a hundred more things and you're going deep and narrow versus, you know, broad. And so I tend to think that marketing is the same principally and the channels may shift from time to time, but really like it's, it's never changed from needing to shift people's attention to the thing that you're selling. And how do you think about AI from a marketing perspective. I mean, obviously, like there's a lot of trepidation and concern in Hollywood and among studios, but from where you sit, I mean, what's your take on AI and where it's all going? I personally love it. And I think from two standpoints, from a personal productivity standpoint, I think my teams are hyper engaged.

46:04Our entire company is hyper engaged, you know, like having a bunch of agents clean up your calendar and your inbox. We need that. We need your tips after this. Yeah, and triage your life and just how quickly it can do that for you and free up capacity for you to spend on creative endeavors. And that's what I really tell the marketing teams is that you want more time. You want time to be able to do the human thinking around creative, which I think AI is like not great at yet. I just last week when I was with the team in LA, they were showing me their creative briefs for a couple films we have coming out.

46:46And I asked, they were like, oh, come see how it takes the brief and turns it into a filmmaker deck. And then we were kind of talking about like how it does it and is it a derivative of something or how it took the brief and kind of knew how to format things and then how to make adjustments. But you could build the deck yourself. It might take you two hours that it just did it in 30 seconds. And again, then it gives them time to work on the movie poster or the trailer. And so I think right now for us, we're experimenting on the creative side, but we do a lot of pre-planning and pre-visualization for it.

47:30And so when I think about our consumer products business and we think about like, what could a line of X be for this show? We can pre-visualize that using AI just to generate some ideas that then allow our creative development teams to take those ideas or to show you and say, hey, does any of this stuff, you know, we can take it to Shonda's team and say, does this Scottish Highlands look resonate with you? And you used to have to build those manually, right? And so again, I think right now for us, it is about, you know, freeing up your capacity to pursue more creative endeavors. And then we'll keep experimenting on how well it does on the creative side we're trying.

48:18I don't think it's quite there yet, but I think it's doing a great job of just like kind of a lot of the administration work around doing campaigns. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. It was so great to be here. It was so great to have you with us.

48:42Jasmine Enberg: Rubrik is the security and AI operations company built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters. Automated recovery. Clean data. A business that keeps moving no matter what hits. One platform. Not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business at Rubric.com. Again, Rubric.com.